


in the shadow of a goodbye

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s03e01 Laws of Nature, Episode: s03e02 Purpose in the Machine, Gen, Male Bonding, One-Sided Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:40:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21539896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Fitz makes a new friend. He doesn't have much luck with those.
Relationships: Will Daniels & Leo Fitz, Will Daniels/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	in the shadow of a goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning** for discussion of suicide. No one so much as attempts it but due to canon events some characters are concerned another intended to do so.
> 
> Title from Paradise Fears' "battle scars" which has nothing to do with this fic except that it came up on shuffle while I was editing.

Fitz thought he knew what hate was. He thought it was that burning frustration when his signature came out looking like a five year-old’s scribble for the hundredth time. He thought it was the ache in his chest when he found out his friends were hiding the bastard who did this to him. He thought it was the knowledge of a gun within arm’s reach when Ward smiled at him across the quinjet.

He was wrong. Hate is this- this emptiness. He’s spent the last six months on a mission, working every second of the day, barely sleeping, eating just to keep the others from getting in his way. He’s been all over the world, hunted down every lead he could possibly find, and it all comes down to a tattered old piece of paper with death _literally_ written all over it.

He hears Coulson apologize, feels his hand on his shoulder. He’d appreciate it under different circumstances. But Coulson’s talking about going to Sheffield, telling her parents she’s MIA and-

No.

 _No_.

It can’t be over. She can’t just be _gone_.

The hate drives him, same as it did that day in the quinjet. Only this time there’s no Hunter to hold him back. His codes gain him access to the armory. He wants something as big as his anger, but he settles for a shotgun and a couple heavy-duty slugs that should be able to knock a few pieces off the rock, make it feel some of the pain he’s feeling.

(He’s not gone insane. He knows the monolith is an inanimate object incapable of feeling anything. But the thought that it _can_ suffer and that he can cause that suffering makes the hurt a little less so he indulges in the fantasy.)

It’s late and this area of the base is typically abandoned anyway due to the high security clearance needed to access anything in it, so he doesn’t expect to see anyone on the way and doesn’t bother to hide the gun or pretend he’s not planning on using it in a completely unsanctioned manner. It’s probably because he assumes this—and the universe has made a point of shitting all over him recently—that he does encounter someone.

“Fitz?”

It’s… Damn, Fitz knows his name. He’s new. Showed up after the dust up with Gonzales’ people and the Inhumans and- Well, he showed up after, is the point. Fitz has talked to him before. A few times actually. So he knows the man’s name is somewhere in his brain, but as it didn’t have anything to do with the monolith it was filed away as unimportant and he really doesn’t have time to search it out now.

“What are you-” New Guy sees the gun. Probably he sees the purpose in every inch of Fitz too.

Fitz tries to barrel past him with an order to get out of his way, but New Guy won’t be deterred. He’s an operative, Fitz remembers too late. He’s smart and spends a lot of time hanging around the labs, adding surprisingly astute suggestions, but he’s a meathead by trade and it shows in the easy way he twists the weapon from Fitz’s hands.

It wrenches him. More than it should, it tears at him down to his heart. So he goes after it, reaches for that physical manifestation of his anger and his hate because without it he’s just left with tears and pain and no means to express them. He’ll be an animal wailing on the floor in seconds and he refuses to let that happen.

He’s better than he used to be. Hunter’s been training him—just when he needed to tire his body out so he could sleep—and he does a damn good job of fighting back if he does say so himself. Lands a couple of nasty kicks to New Guy’s knees and nearly grabs the gun back.

Only New Guy’s better and gets Fitz around back, uses the gun to hold him to his chest and immobilize him.

“Fitz! Knock it off! Think about what you’re doing!”

He can’t do that. Because if he lets himself think he’ll let go of the anger and he’ll break. So he throws an elbow back into New Guy’s ribs. He gets a grunt for his efforts and—yes!—a loosening of the arm at his right. If he angles just right he can-

The cold, unfeeling press of a gun to his side washes over him. He remembers that paper, its simple, one-word declaration that all his hopes have been for nothing, and he thinks, _At least I’ll be with Jemma._

“Sorry about this,” New Guy says. And he fires.

<<<<<

Fitz wakes up in a car. A van, he sees when he opens his eyes properly.

“There he is,” Mack says, voice too loud against the ache dendrotoxin left in Fitz’s skull.

From the driver’s seat, Hunter throws him a grin. “Morning, sunshine! What took you so long?”

Fitz focuses on New Guy sitting in the seat next to Hunter. “Somebody shot me.”

“Didn’t give me much choice, did you?” New Guy asks, completely unrepentant.

Fitz scowls at the back of New Guy’s head. Less because of the shooting than because the man’s name still isn’t coming to him. He tries to remember other occasions he’s heard it but the most obvious one—Coulson giving orders—gives him nothing because Coulson doesn’t like saying his name. And there’s a _reason_ for that, Fitz just can’t put his finger on it.

“He didn’t take any compromising photos while you were knocked out, so you should count yourself lucky,” Hunter says.

“He’s awake now,” Mack says in his voice-of-reason tone, “so we should-”

“Yeah, yeah.” Hunter changes lanes just as an exit sign flies by overhead.

“Where are we?” Fitz asks. All he can see is dust and hills and sparse desert plant-life. 

“Nowhere,” Hunter says with a shrug, as if to say _it doesn’t matter_ at the same time New Guy says, “A hundred miles out of Flagstaff, coming up on a town called Mercy.”

“Like I said,” Hunter says, “nowhere.”

New Guy chuckles to himself. “No, it’s not,” he mutters to his window.

Since no one seems too interested in filling him in and they’re taking the Mercy exit, Fitz settles in and waits. He can feel Mack watching him while Hunter drives. He’s worried about him. But then Mack’s always worried about him. That’s their whole relationship in a nutshell, isn’t it?

By the time Hunter pulls into a cracked parking lot, Fitz has calmed down enough he knows Mack’s not just his keeper, he’s his friend. He’s worried because he cares and that’s no reason to be mad at him.

The fact he’s helped in this whole kidnapping fiasco and brought Fitz to what appears, from the unlit neon over the dusty walls, to be some sort of strip club, that’s a reason to be mad.

“What are we doing here?” Fitz asks, helpless to do anything but follow the others inside.

“Guy time,” Hunter says. “We’re overdue.”

The cool of the air conditioning hits Fitz like a wall when he steps inside. It takes a little more of his anger with it and soon enough he’s sitting in a booth next to Mack.

The place is deserted—it can’t be later than ten in the morning—and a sleepy looking waitress in a bikini comes over to take their order/shake her breasts in their face.

“No, no, we’re not here for that,” New Guy says.

Mack stands to take off his jacket to give the poor girl while Hunter shoots Fitz finger guns from across the table. _Unless you want that?_ he mouths. Fitz shakes his head quickly.

It takes some convincing in the form of a fifty to get their waitress to wear the jacket, but eventually she does and returns with a pitcher of ice cold beer and four mugs.

“Keep ‘em coming,” Hunter says and sloshes beer into everyone’s glasses.

And then, they sit. They drink. They take in the kitschy southwestern décor and obnoxious faux country music coming from the speakers.

“...Are we here for a reason?” Fitz asks after they’ve been brought their second pitcher.

“Whatever reason you want,” Mack says. “You wanna talk, we’ll talk. You wanna drink, we’ll drink.”

“You want that waitress to sit on your lap, we can make that happen too,” Hunter says.

From the sound of it, Mack kicks Hunter’s leg pretty hard under the table.

So this is the intervention. Fitz has known it was coming for a while. Honestly he’s surprised it took this long.

He levels a stare at New Guy, the only one at the table who’s drunk less than him. “You shot me,” he says.

New Guy takes a drink like the question doesn’t even bother him. “You were carrying a gun to the last place anyone saw Simmons. I figured I should do it before you could.”

“Jeez,” Mack breathes.

Hunter grabs the pitcher even though his glass is half-full. “I am not drunk enough for this.”

“I wasn’t going to kill myself,” Fitz says. That’s a ridiculous supposition. He was pissed, not suicidal.

New Guy just holds his stare while he takes another sip.

Some of the indignation goes out of Fitz. “Okay, fine. I _wasn’t going to_. But maybe I was gonna do something equally stupid.”

“Such as…?” Mack asks.

Fitz lifts his glass so he can take a long drink after he says this and thus miss the worst of the others’ reactions. “Open the monolith’s containment unit.”

There’s cursing. Too much for it to fully fade before Fitz has to lower his glass. Hunter looks like he wants to get up and start a fight with one of the other, nonexistent patrons. Mack is gripping his mug so tight it just might break in his hands. New Guy’s just staring at Fitz.

“What were you thinking, Turbo? If Daniels hadn’t been there…” Mack slams his glass down, sending beer sloshing out onto the tabletop.

Daniels, Fitz thinks. That’s New Guy’s name. And that’s why Coulson doesn’t like to say it, because it reminds him of the psycho who went after his ex.

Fitz wants to make it clear he wasn’t planning on being eaten by the monolith like Jemma was any more than he was planning to put that shotgun in his mouth. He just needed to open the containment unit so he could get a good shot at the thing, probably hit it or kick it or yell obscenities. Whatever he felt like at the moment, you know? But he doesn’t think that’ll make anyone feel much better about his plan and, anyway, he’s not feeling too comfortable with all the pity focused on him right now. So he asks, “What’s your tattoo?”

Daniels blinks in surprise.

“What tattoo?” Mack asks. Hunter’s got a gleam in his eye like he’s on the scent of something exciting.

“I saw it while we were fighting,” Fitz says. When Daniels doesn’t move to uncover his arm and give them all a look, Fitz smiles in an admittedly mocking way. “Come on. You shot me, you kidnapped me, the least you can do is show me.”

There’s another moment of hesitation, just long enough for Hunter to promise, “If you don’t, we’ll get you drunk and strip you down to look for more.”

Daniels just shakes his head and rolls up his sleeve. Fitz didn’t get a good look at the thing, what with being busy grappling for a weapon, but he was right that it’s a date. He’d expected it to be a date in memorial of someone lost, however, but this is a date—and a time too, weird—in the future.

“Um,” Hunter says.

“It’s … interesting,” Mack offers.

Fitz just stares at Daniels until the guy cracks a smile. “It’s a date,” he says.

“Yeah, we can see that,” Hunter says.

“No, I mean it’s a date-date.” His gaze slides away from Fitz’s. “It’s when I get to see my girl again.”

“You had to tattoo it on your arm? You couldn’t just remember?”

“She likes when I’m punctual.”

“Whipped,” Hunter coughs.

“Where is she?” Fitz asks, eager to indulge in a relationship that isn’t his own hypothetical one.

Daniels hems and haws. “She’s … out of touch.”

“On assignment,” Mack fills in.

“That’s the worst,” Hunter says. “But! The reunions almost make it worth it. Best weeks of me and Bob’s marriage were when we locked ourselves away together after long assignments.”

“Yeah, and how did that turn out?”

“What’s she like?” Fitz presses before the bickering can start. He wants … He doesn’t know what he wants. Something good. Something hopeful. Something that isn’t his own story that never was.

“Amazing,” Daniels says readily. “Too good for me.”

“They always are,” Mack says, his voice fond.

“When did you know?” Fitz asks, wanting more than just empty words. When Daniels hesitates, he says, “Come on. Everyone knows about Hunter falling face-first for Bobbi-”

“I did not-!”

“-and my whole thing isn’t exactly a secret. Spill.”

Daniels takes a long breath. His fingertips stray to his arm, just brushing the date there—just a few weeks away, he must be getting anxious—and Fitz remembers all the times he’s seen him make that same motion before. There’s a painfully familiar ache in his heart, but this time it’s a little less, like knowing someone else is feeling the same takes the edge off.

“I didn’t want to,” he says. “The situation I was in—had been in—I knew my mental state, knew I was likely to fall for just about anyone. And I didn’t wanna put that on her so I fought it. Tooth and nail. Didn’t do me much good though.”

“She wore you down?” Mack asks, eyes alight. He’s enjoying this.

“No, no. She-” He lifts his eyes to offer a weak smile. “There was someone else. But he was far away, out of the picture, and I … wasn’t.”

“You stole her,” Hunter says with a tone that expresses heartfelt approval.

“Yeah, I guess I did.” He drops his head back. “I got lucky. I know that. I said I would’ve fallen for anyone but the truth is, I can’t imagine anyone _not_ loving her once they got to know her. She’s strong and brave, she’s got a mean streak when she wants to, but she’s also got this light inside her…”

“Damn,” Hunter says.

“You’ve got it _bad_ , man,” Mack laughs.

Daniels laughs along and Fitz feels himself smiling for the first time in a long, long while.

Hunter sees, of course, and is jubilant. “Yes! I knew we could cheer you up!” He smacks Daniels in his tattooed arm so hard it’s gotta hurt. “Okay, you like stories about guys being idiots over women, I’ve got a million of ‘em. Just swear none of this leaves this table.”

Hunter shares several of his best stories—only a couple of which involve Bobbi, hence the oath they’re all forced to take—and Mack shares one or two. Daniels talks about his high school prom and makes Fitz glad he was well into graduate school when he was that age. And Fitz even manages to laugh when he tells his own story. It comes out a little wet, a little slurred thanks to all the beers, but it feels good to talk about all the time he wasted and finally face those demons.

Daniels drives them back, says he’s got a low tolerance thanks to some sort of prison stint he did once upon a time. Fitz is too drunk by that point to be clear on the details, but the point is Daniels has only drunk a fraction of what the rest of them have and nothing but water for the last couple hours.

Fitz drifts off on the way back to the Playground, sleeps away the whole drive until soon he’s stumbling into the lab on Mack’s arm and hearing Daisy and Bobbi’s raised voices.

Hunter’s already sobered up. He’s holding Bobbi’s arms and trying to calm her down while she snipes at him. Coulson’s got his serious face on behind them. Daisy barrels right through it all, coming up to Fitz so fast he’d fall back on his arse if Mack weren’t holding him.

“We know what it is,” she says. “Fitz!” When did she grab his shoulders and what’s so important she has to shake him? “We know what the monolith did to Simmons!”

Fitz sobers pretty quickly after that.

<<<<<

After so many months, Fitz is in no mood to wait for anything, which is probably why Coulson makes sure he does a lot of it. Wait for lab results, wait for decisions to be made over his head, wait outside the prison while Coulson breaks Randolph out. Wait, wait, wait.

He crosses his arms and kicks a stray rock away from the quinjet’s wheels and listens for footsteps over the sound of icy wind because there’s nothing else he’s _allowed_ to do.

What happened is this: while Fitz and the guys were in Mercy drinking and talking about women troubles, Coulson saw the perfect opportunity to have the monolith moved where Fitz couldn’t find it. (And possibly that’s why Fitz was kidnapped in the first place, but as he doesn’t feel like hating his friends when things are finally looking up, he chooses not to examine that possibility too closely.) Daisy—beautiful, wonderful Daisy with her amazing powers that Fitz has always appreciated—sensed a strange vibration from the monolith when the containment unit was first unmoored from the floor. It turned out to be sand, no more than a few hundred granules, all gathered in a corner of the sterile unit.

That was all the proof they needed to determine first that the monolith was a portal and second that it was a portal to an alien world. Which makes sense; had Jemma been sent anywhere on Earth, she would have simply used her cell phone to call them.

So she’s alive. And stranded somewhere out in space. And the only thing standing between Fitz and getting to her is a few measly prison walls.

He toys with the idea of running down the road and back again, just to use up the energy.

“There’s gotta be a reason,” Daniels says, breaking the chill silence. He volunteered to pilot the quinjet out here and, with Hunter gone to hunt for Ward, Fitz was glad to have a friendly face on the stick.

“Public intoxication, according to his file,” Fitz says, looking at the great metal doors on the prison. Considering Randolph is an asgardian, Fitz is surprised there’s any alcohol left in the _country_ after he got to that state.

Of course it’s possible that deficit factored into the severity of his punishment.

“I meant a reason why she hasn’t come back.”

Fitz considers pretending to have misheard the pronoun. He could be thinking Coulson’s taking too long.

But they would both know that was a lie.

“What do you mean?” Fitz asks, choosing instead to pretend he hasn’t been avoiding exactly this train of thought.

Daniels squirms. As well he should. He should damn well be uncomfortable bringing this up. “The monolith’s opened since she left. There has to be a reason she hasn’t just jumped back through.”

“You mean because she’s dead?” Fitz can’t keep the anger out of his voice.

“No! No, I mean- I just mean maybe it’s not as simple as you think.”

“Simple? You think a stone that randomly transforms into a portal to an alien planet is _simple_?”

“No,” Daniels says, suddenly calm. “And you shouldn’t either.”

“She’s probably just busy,” Fitz says, more to calm himself than to shut Daniels up. “She’s alone on an alien world. She’s gotta take care of herself, doesn’t she? And since there’s no way to map when the portal will open, she can’t figure out when to be next to it so she can come back. She’s just been missing it, that’s all.”

For six months. If it was him, he’d wait. Not move an inch until thirst forced him to and then he’d find some way to bring water with him so it wouldn’t happen again. And they think exactly the same so why hasn’t Jemma done that yet?

Alarms from the prison break into his thoughts and he doesn’t bother to revisit them, not even hours later when he feels Daniels watching him follow Coulson and Randolph down to the vault they keep the monolith in.

<<<<<

He escapes that stare for a while. Randolph is quick with theories and Daisy is there to fly them across the world to investigate them. When they find the hidden room and the machine obviously meant to take control of the monolith’s uneven cycle, Fitz forgets everything else. He kind of feels bad about it, to be honest. When Daisy nearly faints from the vibrations the thing makes, he hardly sees she’s all right before he’s insisting they bring the monolith out—and _now_.

There are other options. He can see them as well as anyone. Study the machine, build a better version—one less likely to fall apart from centuries of disuse—test it in the Playground where they have more control, more resources at their disposal. But all of that will take _time_. Bringing the monolith here and working the machine on it without hesitation will take time as well, but not nearly as much. Hours instead of days, weeks even.

He breathes a sigh of relief when Coulson agrees and sends word back to the Playground.

Hours later the Zephyr arrives with the monolith. And of course it’s piloted by one of the only agents yet cleared to pilot the massive plane.

Daniels joins them in the hidden room after delivering the package. He’s wearing that same face, the one that says Fitz isn’t thinking things through.

Fitz ignores him.

Or he tries to. It gets harder when they’re about to turn the machine on.

Randolph and Daisy are hanging back. Him while holding a pipe on the wall, her with her hands over her ears. But everyone else is coming tentatively closer to the hole the monolith rests in, waiting to see what happens.

“Wait,” Daniels says before Fitz can throw the switch. “Just like that?”

“What did you think you were bringing the monolith here for?” Bobbi asks.

“I don’t-” Daniels hesitates, unsure what to say. He looks to Fitz. “Shouldn’t you run more tests? I mean, this is the only portal you’ve got, what if-”

“This machine’s been used on it before,” Fitz says testily. “Randolph saw it himself. The monolith will be fine.” He reaches for the switch again-

-and again is stopped. “But what’s the _plan_?” Daniels presses. “You know she’s probably not waiting on the other side-”

“No! I don’t! I told you-”

Coulson cuts into Fitz’s tirade before he can gather enough steam to really lay into Daniels. “We’ll send up a flare.” He flashes the gun he’s holding. “If she’s gone looking for food, she’ll see it and come back.”

“Or if she is right there you’ll hit her,” Daniels says reasonably.

“The portal rests on the ground, you idiot,” Fitz says. The insult earns him a few looks from the others but he lets their reproach roll off his back. Daniels _is_ an idiot. And he’s in the way. Fitz turns his back on him so he can finally get Jemma home.

“You don’t know that’s how it works-” Daniels cuts off with a cry and then Fitz’s hand is pulled painfully back from the switch. His wrist is jerked so hard he’s surprised it doesn’t break and all that anger wells up, he lashes out, fights back. He won’t let this neanderthal who never even _met_ Jemma, who’s got the woman he loves waiting for him somewhere in the world, bully him.

But this fight ends faster than their last one did when Daniels spins him, pins him to his own chest and presses a gun—a real one this time; Fitz knows his own work and this is definitely _not_ an ICER—to his temple.

“You are not,” he says, his whole body shaking with the words, “opening that portal.”

“Oh my,” Randolph says from his corner.

“Son of a bitch,” Bobbi says.

Guns are out. Daisy’s got her hand up to quake Daniels off his feet. It’s an old-fashioned stand-off. And all it’s doing is getting in the way of bringing Jemma home.

Fitz hopes someone shoots Daniels in the head, really he does.

“Agent,” Coulson says. “What are you doing?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Fitz asks. “He’s a traitor.” He’s honestly not surprised. First Ward. Then Mack. Now Will. He really has the worst luck with male friends.

“I’m not-”

“Who sent you?” Bobbi asks. “Ward?” The judgment there—that he’d work for that particular head of Hydra over another—is thick.

“ _No_.” He adjusts his grip on Fitz but it’s not enough to exploit as an opening.

“Then who?” Bobbi demands beneath Daisy’s question: “Are you an Inhuman?”

She steps forward, drops her hand, all sincerity and understanding. “I know you’ve heard stories about the monolith being a danger to us but that’s all it is. Stories. I’ve spent _months_ on base with the thing and I’m _fine_.”

“I’m not one of your people,” Daniels says, not unkindly. “And you’re wrong.”

“You were sent by someone,” Coulson says in his calm, we’re-all-friends-here voice. “So why not tell us who? And why?”

Fitz can feel Daniels’ heart pounding as he hesitates. Just when he’s about to yell at him to answer already so they can get this on with, Daniels gives the one answer he never would have expected.

“Jemma.”

The whole room goes still—or maybe that’s just Fitz. He certainly doesn’t move when Daniels drops his arm and lifts the gun away.

“Jemma sent me,” he says, just to make it clear. That does get Fitz moving, turning to see his face. Daniels has his hands up, the gun dangling by the trigger guard from one finger, but no one’s moving to relieve him of it.

“What?” Fitz chokes.

Daniels’ expression is an apology. “I told you, it doesn’t work the way you think it does. If you open the portal right now, it’ll open more than a mile away from Jemma, in a valley controlled by a monster who wants nothing more than to kill her.” He holsters his gun so he can pull his sleeve up, showing off the date and time. So needlessly precise for a meeting between lovers. But necessary for lining up events across planets. “Two days from now, the portal will be just outside the cave where she lives. You can open it, toss a line out, and she’ll practically trip over the thing.”

“You said,” Fitz starts, then has to start again because the words come out soundless. “You said she sent you.”

He gestures to the hole the monolith sits in. “There are more of these. One that sends you across time instead of space.” He meets Fitz’s eyes. “You’re gonna figure out how that works so I can come back here and make sure you open the portal at the right time.”

“So you traveled _back in time_ ,” Daisy says, “because we already knew you’d helped us in the past? Like a self-fulfilling prophecy?”

“More like a causation loop,” Fitz says, sounding rather dull even to his own ears. He’d really like to sit down, but there are no chairs in this room. He opts for the floor instead. “So that date is on your arm-”

“To be sure I get it right. And so I know when my time’s up and I get to go home.”

“That’s why your girlfriend’s out of reach,” Mack says. He’s found a crate to sit on, looking only about half as tired as Fitz feels.

“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” Bobbi asks.

“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this but-” he takes a deep breath- “you know Hunter was right about the princess but you won’t admit it.” He turns from Bobbi’s shocked face to Daisy. “You stole one of Jemma’s sweaters before she went missing and you’ve been too ashamed to wear it even though she always said you looked better in it anyway.” Mack is next. “You changed the plans for the Zephyr so you could have a secret fridge in the cargo bay.” Then Coulson. “The reason Ward’s still alive is that you still love him and hope he can be saved from himself.” And finally Fitz. “Jemma’s still sorry about the duck.”

Fitz chokes out a laugh. Or a sob. He’s not really sure which. He kind of wishes he hadn’t already sat down, he’d like to do it again. The first time Jemma went to his childhood home, she accidentally knocked over one of the figurines his mum collects. The duck shattered into a million pieces and while mum’s made a rule she’s not allowed to apologize anymore, Jemma never sees the woman without a baked good in hand.

“So,” Daisy says, clearly trying to shake off the creeps Daniels’ words had on her, “when do we meet you? For real, I mean.”

“Spoilers,” Daniels says with a grin.

Coulson drags a hand down his face. “Two days?” he asks.

“This is Playground time, so a little less.”

“I guess we just wait?” Bobbi asks. The others look around uncertainly, as if they really might wait right here in this room the whole time. Fitz dimly notes that Randolph disappeared at some point, probably eager to get away from the monolith now they have a more reliable source of information.

“Actually.” Daniels lays a hand on one of the dusty walls hiding the machine’s inner workings. “You should probably know that this thing won’t work for long.”

“So you’re saying I should get lots of rest?” Daisy asks, looking sick at the idea of using her powers on the monolith.

“Or that someone should build a more stable version back at the Playground.” No surprise Daniels’ eyes are on Fitz.

He slaps his hands on his knees and, when it’s offered, takes Daniels’ hand to get up. “It’s all about the vibrations, so it shouldn’t take more than a few speakers.”

“I knew you’d figure it out.”

Fitz heads for the stairs so he can start designing what he’ll need to build. As he leaves he hears Coulson ask, “You couldn’t have told us before you brought the thing all the way out here?”

“Hey, my orders were to interfere with the timeline as little as possible. And those came from you, so take it up with yourself.”

<<<<<

A little less than two days later, Fitz stares at what he and Mack and honestly everyone else have built. The whole team have pitched in one way or another during the marathon build. A platform beneath which sit a ring of six speakers, all connected to a computer that will—hopefully—emit the right frequency to open the monolith. The monolith has been given a new home yet again, this one a hexigonal prism so that each speaker can rest against one of the faces. There’s a hole in the platform above it, beside which sits a massive roll of steel cable, just like Daniels recommended, along with a bouquet of balloons. Those were Coulson’s addition. They’ll be sent through at the end of the line just in case the calculations are off and Jemma’s not so close she’ll see the portal immediately when it opens. And, because it’s Coulson, they’re all printed with the SHIELD logo so she knows just who’s come to rescue her.

Everything’s in place, ready to go. Now they’re just waiting on the right time.

“You said-” Fitz says, then stops. He’s never been good at this kind of thing. “You said you weren’t supposed to interfere.”

“Yeah.” Daniels is next to him, the only sign he’s anxious the shaking of his heel against his chair.

“So stopping me, kidnapping me, that wasn’t interfering?”

Daniels drops his head nearly to his hands. “When we meet, things aren’t great. Circumstances are less than ideal, let’s just say.”

“We’re not friends in your time,” Fitz says.

“Things are … strained. You’ve got reason not to like me and I hated you before we met—I mean, I tried to like you, to be understanding and all that shit.” He chuckles. “But man, I hated you. Believe it or not, I was jealous.”

 _Of what_ , Fitz wants to ask. But Daniels still hasn’t answered his first question. “So why help me? Why be my friend?”

Daniels straightens up so he can really look Fitz over. “These last few months, you’ve been missing Jemma. And I’ve been missing my girl too. I guess I just felt some sympathy.”

He goes back to staring at the hole in the platform and Fitz goes on staring at him.

“When that time comes,” Fitz asks, “you’ll go back to Jemma when she sent you?”

“Back to the future, yeah.”

“But you’re going back to her.”

“I guess, I mean, you’re there too, you know. You all are.” Daniels’ smile isn’t half as charming as he thinks it is.

Fitz waits for that smile to fall. “Don’t make me say it again.” If that’s the future that’s waiting for him, Fitz just needs to know. So he’s prepared.

Daniels touches the tattoo on his arm. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m going back to Jemma.” He stands, offers a hand. “Listen, I’m-”

“Don’t pretend you’re sorry.” 

He smiles again. “I wasn’t going to.”

Well, at least he’s honest. “I could try to stop you. I’ve got time to get in your way.”

“You really don’t.”

Smug bastard. He’s probably right though. Jemma will need time to recover, time when Fitz won’t want to pressure her. And by the time she’s well… Well, Fitz has never been good at picking his moments.

“If you hurt her, I’ll kill you.”

“And that’s why I like you.” Daniels rests a companionable hand on his shoulder, but only for a fraction of a second. A few minutes ago they were friends, but now … now there’s Jemma between them. Fitz supposes he’ll have to wait and see where they are by the time Daniels travels to the past.

The others begin streaming in soon after that. Even Daisy comes, stopping by briefly to give Daniels a goodbye hug before retreating to a separate room from which she can observe the camera and computer readouts and watch for malfunctions.

After that, it’s time.

“Here we go,” Daisy’s voice crackles through the eight large speakers and then there’s only the deep, bone-quaking hum.

It all goes exactly according to plan, which Fitz supposes is the benefit of having a time traveler around. The monolith opens, the metal line is sent through along with the balloons, and seconds later they see a hand gripping the wire, climbing it back.

“Jemma!” Fitz calls, though he doubts she can hear him, submerged on another planet as she still is.

“Mack!” Coulson barks.

Mack’s job is to pull in the line and though he rushes to do just that, there’s time enough to see another hand reaching past the first, followed by-

A third?

Fitz can’t look away, but he doesn’t need to. Daniels knows exactly what he’s thinking.

“Like I said,” he says in Fitz’s ear, “you really don’t have time. And I’m still not sorry.”

The air beside Fitz shifts. Almost like a balloon popped right next to him, only there’s no sound of rubber rapidly shrinking back to its preferred size, just the feel of air rushing. Daniels is gone.

Because the other Daniels is here. Filthy and bearded, pale as death, but it’s definitely him. Mack pulls him in along with Jemma like two fish reeled into a fisherman’s boat. He collapses on his back while she twists, looking around at all of them. Her gasps turn into laughter.

“We’re home,” she says to them all, to the air, to Daniels as she rolls on top of him. “We’re home.” She kisses him, still laughing. “I told you we’d make it home.”

“Yeah, yeah, you know all. Now where’s my cheeseburger?”

That—for some reason—sets Jemma to laughing even harder. She flops onto her back next to him, smiling at the ceiling.

“Fitz,” someone says. He’ll never know quite who. He ignores them like he ignores everything else around him except the one thing that matters.

“Jemma,” he says again, hurrying to her side.

“Oh, _Fitz_.” She reaches for him, face breaking into a smile. He has to do most of the work, lifting her so he can get a proper hug, but she tries, bless her. She’s painfully thin in his arms but he doesn’t even care. She’s here, she’s safe, she’s alive. Nothing—not the future, not the man resting next to her, _nothing—_ matters so long as that’s true. He’ll take all the rest in its own time. Right now, this is all he needs.


End file.
